by Ursula Hegi
“Marlene cannot do that here,” he objects.
But Marlene does. Such disruption—curses and tears and hiccups and a whirlpool of Sisters who hustle Girls and parishioners from the chapel—out now out—but not enough Sisters to shield the priest who has never seen a crotch, a bloody crotch, a bloody baby. Whenever he administers last rites to dying mothers, he protects his modesty and sits by the head of the bed.
This Girl isn’t even on a bed. This Girl sprawls on the floor of the church with her legs spread and proclaims: “My son’s name is Jesus.” Then crosses herself.
Sacrilege. The priest has never heard of a person named Jesus. And this Jesus is so scrawny and gray-skinned that the priest must christen him right away—naked as he’s born.
Sister Franziska grabs Baby Jesus from the priest, holds him upside down by his feet, and whacks his rump.
“Don’t hurt him,” Marlene wails.
When Sister slaps him again it comes to Marlene that her true calling is to be a nun. “Such an offering to God,” she cries, elated. “Such an offering to all you Sisters—”
Sister Franziska lays Baby Jesus on the altar and opens her wide mouth across his face to find a gossamer thread of breath.
Marlene’s teeth shatter and she tries to sit up, but Sister Hildegunde guides her back down.
“My Baby Jesus and I will live with you at the St. Margaret Home.”
Sister Hildegunde and another Sister spread cold wet sheets around Marlene. “She is burning up.”
“You—” Marlene wails, “you would reject the Heilige Jungfrau if she stood here with Baby Jesus in her arms.”
“We’re trying to save both of you.”
* * *
In the dark dormitory the girls huddle around Hedda and wail with her. But then one steps away. Another. They stomp their bare feet, hard, pound their soles into the floor, and howl as they dance sideways in a circle. When Hedda tries to join in, she teeters and they all link arms to steady her. Faster now, their dance. Like a drum beat in the chapel below, where the Sisters pray over the bodies of Marlene and Baby Jesus. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. When the Sisters arrived on Nordstrand they were young. Now they are old, while the girls remain young, forever replaced by new girls who play pranks and die and dance and squabble over who is the best nun. Some adore Sister Franziska, compassionate and accomplished; others swear Sister Elinor is the best, light-hearted and generous.
* * *
First dawn and Sister Ida shakes Lotte awake.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s Hedda! Sister Franziska says for you to deliver the baby.”
“I’m not ready.”
“Hedda is ready. Hurry—”
“Hedda isn’t due yet.”
“Well, she is ready.”
“But I’ve never done this alone.”
“Sister Franziska says you know how.” Sister Ida starts crying. “She’s in the chapel praying over Marlene and her baby.”
“Oh God— Both of them?” Now Lotte is crying.
“Yes. Both—” Sister Ida’s voice gives out, and she taps her throat with two fingers. She motions to the bed where Wilhelm lies asleep on his stomach. “I’ll stay with…”
Hands sweaty on the banister, Lotte hastens down the marble stairs.
But in the delivery room something odd happens: her hands become knowledgeable, and her heart grows steady. There’s nothing beyond this sacred work, no fear, no sorrow. Only Hedda. Now. Sacred to be the first to touch Hedda’s newborn, sooner than Lotte touched her own newborns because a midwife held them first. But now Lotte’s hands. Now. And though the streaks on Hedda’s daughter—white and pink—are the same as on Lotte’s newborns, this bringing into life does not tilt her into her own loss as she feared, but calms her, allows her to give something she didn’t know she had.
I can do this?
I can do this again.
“Don’t forget,” Hedda says. “I’m keeping her.”
“I won’t forget.” Lotte lays the infant against Hedda’s breast.
“Is Marlene dead?”
Lotte strokes the Girl’s damp hair. “Yes.”
“Promise you won’t let anyone take my baby.”
“I promise.”
Hedda shivers. “They’ll try to adopt her. Tilli said to Marlene that people will be all nice to you, but once they have your baby, they don’t want you.”
“No one can take her.”
“Tilli said to Marlene that some come from far away with false names and lie about where they live so you can’t find your baby again.”
“Tilli doesn’t know everything. Look at me, Hedda. You did not sign adoption papers. The Sisters and I won’t let anyone take your daughter. We know your decision. We also know you make good plans.”
* * *
After confession on Saturdays the Old Women gather for Kaffeeklatsch—coffee und gossip—in each other’s kitchens to compare penances the priest has assigned.
“He usually is fair.”
“Fair enough.”
“A bit pompous.”
“And vain.”
“He does those neck stretches he learned from the sexton.”
“Two vain men.”
“With sagging necks.”
“Sagging everything.”
The Old Women laugh.
“Still, he is generous and will sit with you through your grief, even your rage.”
“He wants to be a good priest.”
“And a good man.”
“But he’s more like a boy.”
“Well-meaning.”
“And naïve. He thinks he knows more about the Sisters than they know about one another.”
“He doesn’t even know that Sister Konstanze and Sister Ida lie with each other at night.”
“Then why do we know?”
“Because we know how to know.”
“So philosophical.”
“Do you think he’s truthful with his own confessor?”
“Not about coveting the bride of Christ.”
“Hoping to break the sixth commandment.”
“I don’t think so. For him it’s more exciting to follow Sister Hildegunde around.”
“Lusting from a distance.”
“Distance because Sister Hildegunde knows how to get away from him.”
“Or send him off with a list of duties.”
“Don’t underestimate chaste obsession. It outlasts other obsessions.”
“Like Maria’s fisherman.”
“You can tell by the purity in his eyes.”
“He never had another woman after Maria jilted him.”
“Some pursued him. Some in this very room.”
* * *
The Old Women count on one another to keep confidences. But one may get reckless and take gossip outside their circle, gossip she has no right to. “I thought you’d want to know…” She may even spin stories. Intoxicated by the curiosity of her listeners, she won’t notice when the Old Women exclude her from matters of confidence. This is instinctive, does not need discussion. Easy enough to wish the reckless one a good morning; to share a recipe or news of a grandchild to be born; to sit together embroidering initials on handkerchiefs and knitting mittens linked with crocheted rope, impossible to lose; to construct huge Schultüten—school cones from stiff paper, paint them in bright colors, trim them with ribbons and pictures that reflect each child’s interests; to visit merchants who are glad to contribute gifts for the six-year-olds starting school. To sweeten their first day, the Old Women present each child with a colorful Schultüte as tall as a six-year-old, each different in decor, each filled with hazelnuts and a blackboard; dried apple slices and marbles; raisin bread and a ruler; chalk and initialed handkerchiefs and alphabet blocks. They tell the children how a Schultüte eased their first day of school.
“I still have mine.”
“I still have my grandfather’s Schultüte.”
18
Frost Sketches Flowers on the Windows
Frost sketches flowers on the windows of the St. Margaret Home the morning Lotte prepares to leave. After breakfast the Sisters embrace her and Wilhelm.
“I’m so grateful to you,” she tells them.
“And we are proud of you.”
“I’ll be here for work every day,” she promises.
As she carries Wilhelm home, fog rises from the ground, shrouds people and animals, houses. Her front door sticks and she presses the length of her back against it, rocks until it gives. Inside, the smell of absence, damp and stale as if no one had lived here for years—not months. Here, too, frost flowers on the windows, but already melting, growing luminous.
Late into that night Lotte is startled awake. Knocking at her door. A steady and relentless knocking.
Tilli. In a panic and without a coat. “I’m strong I can work for you—”
“You can’t be out there without a coat.” Lotte pulls her inside, leads her to the chair by the stove.
“I can work for you in your house and in the fields. I can help with Wilhelm.”
Lotte tucks a blanket around her. “For now—” She keeps her voice as gentle as she can. “—I need to live in my house alone.”
“But you’re not alone. You have Wilhelm.”
“Alone with Wilhelm, then.”
“Please, let me stay.” Tilli’s chin trembles. But she manages to thrust it out and say, “For now.”
Lotte rubs the Girl’s shoulders. “Oh, Tilli—” If she could just hire her, she would; but to let her live here means more, means she cannot turn her out, means making Tilli her family. If only Tilli were not so pushy.
“I can cook and I can darn and I can wash windows and floors and—”
“I need to learn how to live alone with my son.”
“Where is Wilhelm?”
“Upstairs asleep. You’ll see him tomorrow.”
She lets Tilli stay the night, sleep by the stove, and in the morning they walk to the St. Margaret Home with Wilhelm.
* * *
One day when Lotte doesn’t get to the St. Margaret Home at dawn, Tilli arrives and insists she take care of Lotte who is feverish, weak. Wilhelm is screaming, full diaper and empty belly. After Tilli cleans him up, she brings Lotte a tin cup with cool water. Lays a damp washcloth across her forehead.
Wilhelm paws at Tilli’s breast. He knows how to open buttons. Is determined.
His mother is watching Tilli who suddenly feels cautious.
“Should I?” she asks. “He’s hungry.”
Lotte nods but it irks her seeing her son at Tilli’s breast. He loves Tilli better than her and it can’t be good for him if this continues. Or for me.
Spit bubbles, Wilhelm blows spit bubbles and Tilli lifts him high. They giggle and he scrambles his little legs in the air to get back to Tilli.
He doesn’t look at me like that. Still, Lotte is glad he has another person who loves him. And that’s true. She should be glad. Also true: Tilli is taking him away from Lotte. My last child.
“He wants to come to you,” Tilli lies, afraid Lotte resents her for Wilhelm’s love. But Wilhelm has been mine till now.
Lotte holds up her arms and Tilli nestles Wilhelm on the bed.
He pats his mother’s face, plants birdie kisses on her nose.
She says, “Mein lieber, lieber Junge.” My dear, dear boy.
His pats get harder.
“That’s enough.” Tilli tries to catch his hands in hers.
His face darkens. He slaps his mother.
But Lotte doesn’t flinch. “It’s because he remembers me tossing him into the sea.”
“He is too young to remember.”
“Oh, he knows, Tilli.”
PART FOUR
1859–1866
19
Men Who Turn to Stone
What seizes my heart the first time I see The Sensational Sebastian is how he fastens his eyes on me, only me, as he lets go of the trapeze and catapults himself through the air in his emerald suit. A man built for flying.
I’m sure he hasn’t performed with the Ludwig Zirkus because I went to the show every September when the Zirkus arrived in Rodenäs, my village near the German-Danish border where I went to school and served my apprenticeship at the Becker Mode Atelier. I came for the stories the ringmaster staged. Herr Ludwig had such high regard for his monkeys that he assigned them roles in his Biblical stories, elevating them to saints and angels. Affectionate and clever, they brought him whatever he wanted for his stories—banners or candles, a stuffed parrot or Moses’s stone tablets. Although his stories began with scenes from the Bible, he roused his audience to change the outcome with their imagination and memories. As ringmaster, he tapped into your hunger for magic because he understood you hadn’t come to see a performance. No. You’d come so that he could show you what you wanted, something fantastic, so uniquely yours that later—when you talked about the Ludwig Zirkus—you’d mention details others won’t recall, the white dog’s blue eyelids, say, or that Luzia The Clown reminded you of your Erbtante—inheritance aunt.
* * *
Outside the big tent, The Sensational Sebastian stands in his shimmering suit and extends one hand as if to bless me. He lays two fingers between my eyebrows.
“I have not seen you before,” I manage to say, intimidated by his elegance and confidence.
“It’s my first year with the Ludwigs.”
Instead of going home, I let him lead me toward a wagon decorated with panels of life-sized angels and saints. The entrance is in the center of a carved panel with the Annunciation scene. As he folds down his front stoop, the door swings open, and I have to laugh because here I stand in front of the Jungfrau Maria while the Archangel Gabriel informs her she’ll carry the son of God inside her womb.
“Why are you laughing?” The Sensational Sebastian asks.
I motion toward the panel. “Plenty of warning for any woman who has her doubts about immaculate conception.”
“Ah. So you would like to come inside.”
“I would like to stay outside,” I say, intent on hiding my awkwardness.
“Should I believe you?”
Quickly, I sit down on the front stoop. Hide my hands in the pleats of my skirt, hands chapped from fine stitching and from lace. “I’m a seamstress. Wedding and evening; silk and satin; lace and beads—”
“Does the seamstress have a name, or must I invent one for her?”
“Sabine Florian,” I say, wishing I’d let him invent a fashionable name for me.
The Sensational Sebastian lowers himself next to me on the stoop, one elbow braced against the Archangel Gabriel’s wooden knee. His thighs stretch the emerald fabric. Those eyes of his—burning my skin.
I want to touch the dip of his throat. No—
“Don’t let some archangel scare you away.” His smile. No woman in the world for him but me.
I know I can’t tell my mother about meeting him. She’s so proper and strict that she won’t see his beauty. Just his danger. As if I didn’t know. I turn from him, point at the pink-gray sky where geese pull their arrows toward the Nordsee—large arrows and smaller arrows—their harsh calls dwindling the farther out they fly.
But he won’t let me distract him. “All those Bible scenarios bring us customers. Even the preachy ones justify buying Zirkus tickets. The Ludwigs aren’t even like that.”
“Like what?”
“Church-fearing.” He tells me about growing up in a Zirkus family. “Once I was two I trained daily, bending and leaping and hanging.”
“That’s awfully young.”
“With children you have to start early.”
“Not that early.”
“I walked on my hands before I turned three.” He sounds proud. “I earned my own money before I could count it.”
He doesn’t have the propriety to spare me from his gaze as most people will when your face is afire, and I long to brush against his thigh,
undo the braided closures on his emerald jacket. The fabric is worn shiny, but the design is fashionable, sculpting his chest and waist and shoulders.
I can learn to copy this design once I sew his clothes …
* * *
Though my mother has warned me about the fragile worth of a young woman’s reputation, I follow The Sensational Sebastian into his Annunciation wagon.
“I’ve never been with a woman who wants sex as much as a man,” he tells me when I wake to sun through the curtain and the shadow of a wash line against the wall.
The heat of his breath races from my ear to my down-there. I feel luscious. Greedy.
“Women,” he says, “endure men’s lust without pleasure.”
“I can’t believe I’m the only woman who—”
“Oh … but you are, Sabine.” He studies my face, closely. Is he shocked by my appetites? Intrigued? Trying to prove to himself—and to me—that I’m not like other women?
I’m embarrassed, push back. “How many women?”
He makes a fist, counts his fingers as he lets them pop up, makes another fist, and continues counting. “Eight. That includes you.”
“Hardly enough for your assumption about women.”
He laughs. “You’ll make me reconsider.”
“About those women before me…”
He presses himself against me, traces my jaw from one ear lobe to the other.
“… those women merely endured you?”
He yanks an invisible blade from his chest. “How about you and men?”
“Nine,” I lie, tripling my sins to be ahead of him.
“Did you count me?”
I try for a mysterious smile.
“Did you, Sabine?”
“Not yet.” I swing myself across his thighs, flick my thumbs across his nipples, then rake my fingers toward his navel—who am I? what am I doing?—and down through his pubic hair without touching him, there, not yet, though he bucks to get himself into my hand.
* * *